7. What action is the Minister taking to promote awareness of the rights of older people? OQ57962

Thank you for that question. We are funding Age Cymru to work with older people to raise awareness and understanding of rights using our co-produced guidance 'Making rights work for older people'. Age Cymru is also producing a video toolkit and is delivering an older people's rights campaign, which is running until June.

Minister, pension credit is a top-up for our most vulnerable pensioners and is worth an average of £3,300. As well as a cash top-up to the state pension, it is a bridge to accessing a lot of other benefits, such as help with housing costs, heating bills, council tax reduction schemes and free over-75 tv licences. It's estimated that around a quarter of people who could claim this extra help do not currently do so. The UK Conservative Government has launched a major campaign to encourage eligible pensioners, as well as those who care for and support older people, to access the help that they are entitled to. So, Minister, will you commit to working with the UK Government and the older people's commissioner to raise awareness of the availability of pension credit to vulnerable older people in Wales who are entitled and have a right to claim this additional financial support? Thank you. 

Thank you very much. That follows on very nicely from earlier points that I was making about my meetings with the older people's commissioner. And, indeed, I know there have been calls from across the Chamber—I think Peredur has also raised it—about how we can improve the take-up—it's a UK Government benefit—of pension credit in particular, but there is also access to other benefits as well. We're working, of course, with the older people's commissioner, and we're also working with the UK Government. We've been asking the UK Government to join us, with Scotland, in a UK-wide 'Claim what's yours' campaign, and we're now getting some response to that. But I will say that 'Making rights work for older people', which we published last year, was co-produced guidance with Social Care Wales and with Age Cymru, is also about making sure that older people are engaged and are telling us the best way to get the message over that these are rights that they're entitled to and we want them to take up, to ensure that they don't suffer as much as well under the cost-of-living crisis, because it is also hitting pensioners very hard.